I'm Tom Yates — a full-stack engineer and AWS-certified cloud architect with 20+ years building scalable, secure, high-volume software. In my spare time I take on a small number of focused side projects: architecture reviews, serverless MVPs, AI-powered features, and React / Node.js builds. Past clients include the Royal Foundation, AstraZeneca, TfGM and the one-million-user balance app.
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Good side projects for me are ones where a small, senior pair of hands moves the needle fast: an architecture review, a serverless backend, an AI-powered feature, or a React / Node.js MVP that needs to be built properly from day one.
From founding a software agency to leading engineering on consumer products with millions of users, to senior engineering on the BBC's identity platform.
Senior engineer working on large-scale, high-traffic services at the BBC. Day-to-day across TypeScript, React, Node.js and AWS (CDK, Lambda, API Gateway), with a focus on architecture, security and reliability. Security Champion for the team, and a regular contributor to code review, incident response, mentoring and internal knowledge sharing — including a talk on applying AI to day-to-day engineering work.
Led a mixed team of in-house and freelance engineers to build a React Native live-streaming app and a React broadcast studio, on a serverless AWS backend I designed end-to-end. Tackled complex WebRTC reliability challenges and mentored a junior developer through pairing. Stack: React, React Native, TypeScript, Node.js, AWS, Swift, Objective-C, Python, Go, WebRTC.
A run of high-trust freelance engagements: a secure Excel obfuscation platform for AstraZeneca on serverless AWS; a static, ultra-secure site for the Duchess of Cambridge's Centre for Early Childhood (presenting directly to the Royal Foundation); the WCAG 2.1-compliant Clean Air Greater Manchester site for TfGM; and Engineering Lead on the balance menopause app — which grew to 1M+ users and a 4.9★ rating and was featured by Apple.
Co-founded and ran production at a software agency for eight years. Established the Scrum-based development process, set and maintained engineering standards, ran staff reviews, and mentored junior engineers while shipping client work across web, mobile and cloud.
Graduated from the University of Manchester in 2002 and spent the early part of my career as a developer at the university, director of a small hosting company, and freelance web developer — building up a broad foundation across industries and stacks.
A selection of projects from across my career — from national broadcasters to charities to consumer apps with millions of users.
Senior engineer working on large-scale, high-traffic digital services, with a focus on architecture, security and reliability on a modern cloud stack.
Engineering Lead for a live-streaming React Native app and React broadcast studio, on a serverless AWS backend I designed from the ground up.
Built a secure Excel obfuscation platform on AWS Lambda with S3 triggers and a CloudFormation-driven deployment pipeline, reliably delivered across multiple environments.
Website for the Duchess of Cambridge's Centre for Early Childhood. Chose a static-site architecture for security and performance; presented directly to the Royal Foundation and the Duchess.
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Engineering Lead on the balance app. Designed a serverless architecture that scaled past one million users while holding a 4.9★ App Store rating — the app was featured by Apple.
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WCAG 2.1-compliant static site built on a headless CMS, with a CI/CD pipeline that regenerates the site on content change — keeping it fast, secure and always up to date.
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Mobile visitor experience for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at Thiepval, served from a wireless access point on-site in northern France.
Mobile-first, multilingual video fit guide for Lee Jeans, integrated across their WordPress and Magento ecosystem.
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React-based fund analysis tool for a global asset management firm, built with a small multinational team covering UI, API and database.
iOS & Android app for Colt, integrated with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory for enterprise device management.
Multi-stack UI and API running on an NVIDIA Jetson in Docker, with custom webcam rendering over WebSockets and WebP. Worked remotely with hardware in a laboratory.
A fully serverless web app to automate the admin of parking appeals, including PDF generation, postal letters and electronic responses.
I take on a small number of focused side projects in my evenings and weekends — architecture reviews, serverless backends, AI-powered features, React / Node.js MVPs. If that sounds like what you need, drop me a line and tell me about it. Based in Macclesfield, working with teams across Manchester and remotely.